A jelly jar begets a frugal frozen treat

Spencer SoperOf The Morning Call

Freeze!

Keep your hands where we can see "em. And back away from the empty jelly jar.

Before you toss it into the recycling bin, you might want to hear a tip from Bethlehem resident Sean Gill on how to squeeze one more use out of that container. Just look at all those little globs of jelly stuck to the sides of the jar that you were about to throw away. For shame!

Here's Sean's tip:

"We took an almost empty jelly jar, and filled it up with milk. Now for each day we would give that jar a shake "til all that jelly is dissolved into the milk. That should take anywhere from three days to a week, depending on how much clumps ya' want in it. Now that's a real treat. Then pour it into a mold or ice cube tray, and Voila. Cold popsicles for the summer."

That sounds absolutely disgusting, Sean. We're dying to give it a try.

In fact, we did.

We admit being rather grossed out by the whole concept. But we whipped up a batch of empty-jelly-jar-sicles in the "On The Cheap" testing lab.

Five of six tasters in The Morning Call newsroom gave the empty-jelly-jar-sicles a thumbs up. So go ahead and give "em a try.

"The grape jelly popsicle was OK, but it would rock if it had peanut butter in it," reporter Genevieve Marshall said. "A PB&J in popsicle form? Awesome."

Check out our video demonstration on Sean's tip, and additional reviews, at mcall.com.

And if you lack our enthusiasm, here's what Sean's daughter had to say about the recipe.

"One day our daughter came up to us and asked us how to make that old home-made popsicle that she missed so much. Well, after we told her, she looked at us with this look of "YUCK!!!"